Classification via two-way comparisons

02/19/2023

∙

by   Marek Chrobak, et al.

∙

0

∙

share

Given a weighted, ordered query set Q and a partition of Q into classes, we study the problem of computing a minimum-cost decision tree that, given any query q in Q, uses equality tests and less-than comparisons to determine the class to which q belongs. Such a tree can be much smaller than a lookup table, and much faster and smaller than a conventional search tree. We give the first polynomial-time algorithm for the problem. The algorithm extends naturally to the setting where each query has multiple allowed classes.